UK Charts: Bond still holding firm at number one
007 reigned supreme at the top of the UK games charts for the third straight week as Everything Or Nothing prevented Codemasters from chalking up a number one with its console football management sim LMA Manager 2004.
007 reigned supreme at the top of the UK games charts for the third straight week as Everything Or Nothing prevented Codemasters from chalking up a number one with its console football management sim LMA Manager 2004.
Out of the seven new releases featuring in the various charts, three made it into the Top 40 with LMA the highest at number two, followed by Square Enixâ GameCube exclusive Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles at number five and EAâs Cricket 2004 which charted unexpectedly high at number eight.
According to Chart-Track, sales of FF:CC represented over 50 per cent of the entire full price GameCube software this week — a telling sign of just how slow game sales are on the format right now. The stat body also said sales of the game were just a quarter of those achieved by FFX-2 in its first weekend on sale — although itâs still a fairly impressive figure, given that the UK PS2 installed base is around nine times larger than the Cubeâs.
Last weekâs highest new entry Deus Ex: Invisible War dropped one place to number four but claimed the Xbox number one and PC number two slot, Sonic Heroes slipped to number three, SOCOM 2 held firm at number seven (number four on PS2), FFX-2 went down five place to number nine, while Need For Speed: Underground went from number six to number 10 — and represents the last of the pre-Christmas hits currently in the Top 10.
Elsewhere in the Top 40, though, 26 out of the remaining 30 titles in the chart were all released in the run up to Christmas (10 of which were released prior to 2003!), so the listings still have a familiar look to them, with no fewer than 12 EA related titles in the Top 40.
On a per-format basis 32 of the 37 game titles in the chart are multi platform, leaving one Cube exclusive (FF CC), three PS2 exclusives (FFX-2, SOCOM 2, EyeToy), and one PC (CM 03/04). The best selling Xbox exclusive, Project Gotham Racing 2, didn't make it into the All-Formats chart but managed number 40 on the full price chart (number six on Xbox).
Meanwhile, THQ's Pixar movie licensed title Finding Nemo heads up the GBA chart once again, but recent new entry Sonic Battle dropped to number five, trading places with Yu-Gi-Oh: The Sacred Cards.
The PC chart is once again finds itself topped by Norton Internet Security, and awash with Sims titles, with only a few recent entries such as DX: IW (number two), X2 (number six) and Delta Force: Team Sabre (number 15) to break up the tedium - although next week should hopefully improve on this, with key PC titles such as Battlefield Vietnam and Unreal Tournamant 2004 both arriving.
This week's "least wanted" included Konami's Dancing Stage: Unleashed (Xbox number nine), Sony's survival horror title Forbidden Siren (number 35 full price), and Capcomâs Resident Evil Code: Veronica (GameCube number five). On the "missing in action" list we have THQ's Tak & The Power Of Juju, Rare's Sabre Wulf, a Namco flop in the form of Spawn: Armageddon (despite being released on all three console formats), Dreamcatcher's Universal Combat, and a pile of titles that apparently came out last Friday, but which are apparently not stocked by the mighty Game — always an ominous sign.
Next week should see the likes of Battlefield: Vietnam, Sword Of Mana, Rainbow Six 3: Athena Sword add on, Unreal Tournament 2004 and Tenchu: Return From Darkness chart strongly, but a busy week could see tougher market conditions for the likes of Midnight Nowhere, Silent Scope Complete, Shining Soul 2, Sacred, Paradise Cracked, Kya, Castle Strike, Carve and even the much delayed Breed.